The Thing

By AP KRYZA

It’s only fitting that a film about a creature that can clone anything it touches has itself become mimicked over and over again. As such, The Thing sort of dodges the whole remake debate. It can’t, however, mask the fact that it’s simply not a very good film. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. hits rewind on John Carpenter’s 1982 film, tracing a Norwegian research team’s discovery of, and subsequent evisceration by, a pissed-off and rather hungry alien frozen in the ice. But first, as anyone who has seen earlier versions of the story knows, it preys on the mind, with the scientists and grunts discovering the monster can imitate them, and thus turning on one another. Taking over the well-worn flamethrower of Kurt Russell (though not, sadly, the sombrero), Mary Elizabeth Winstead steps up to the plate as the unlikely badass who discovers the monster’s nature and decides to kick some ass. Arterial sprays and face-eating ensue. The new Thing goes through all the beats with a workmanlike commitment to recapturing the lightning of its immediate predecessor, but Heijningen’s obvious infatuation with overwrought and cartoonish CGI gore gets in the way all too often. Each suspense scene consists of a character being accused of being a monster, a shouting match, and another dead body. The Thing manages to fall somewhere between a prequel and a remake, but plays more like a special-effects reel with zero character or narrative consequence. It’s simply a copy of a copy of a copy, and the reprint quality fades with each scene.